Good Old Days is truly a unique place when it comes to dining experience. This restaurant of olden Chinese style setting is located deep in the heart of Kampung Sungai Kayu Ara, Petaling Jaya, away from the hustle and bustle of the busy city roads and highways. It certainly wasn’t an easy place to find.

I actually came by Good Old Days quite a few months back when I was scouting around for some dinner packages, it was a pleasant surprise. The place looked so interesting, I knew then that I have to give this place a try one day and so the fateful day came. 😀 My pocket got hurt a little but let’s not talk about that for now.

Now, about the restaurtant – the first thing you’ll notice when coming to this uniquely designed restaurant is the really ancient Chinese style deco, including the arch that look like someone really imported it all the way from China.

Anyway, again I wasn’t with my full garb of photography equipment, thus please bear with my lackluster shots.

Left : The arch, along with the make shift farm.Right : The restaurant building, with indoor and outdoor dining area.

As if the arch and the brown building itself wasn’t enough to arouse your curiosity, the vicinity is also furnished with items that adds to the feel of travelling back in time, and to another land in fact. 🙂 I see boars, horses, cow, pig sty, cooking area and many more.

Left : Really old-fashion cooking area of who knows what era.Right : Ahh, that’s how people store liquor back then!

Upon entering the restaurant, you are immediately greeted by waiters that are dressed in ancient Chinese costume. Don’t worry, no Chinese Emperor hanging around – the theme here is a pheasant style dining experience, unfortunately the same can’t said about the cost of dining here.

Now the dining hall is a huge, pillar-less area or perhaps you could assume that the central pillar or 2 were actually made into trees! The chairs and tables weren’t wooden though, the surface was wooden but the rest of it was cold, hard steel and really damn heavy to move around.

Other than the ancient theme, the dining area was moderately lit but well air-conditioned. A few TVs were placed in the hall, during my visit they were showing some 70s Chinese movie.

This is where you eat.

Ordering the food was rather inconvenient, at least I find it that way. The ordering style was like that of Old Town White Coffee where they have a piece of paper which all the items there and you tick what you want.

While it worked well for Old Town White Coffee, I certainly find it not working well here. The paper was MANY times larger than that of Old Town White Coffee and wth 6 people seated comfortably apart from one another, we each had to take a piece of the menu paper, either that or we shared 1 paper among 2 persons.

So we did our kindergarten scribble on the order form and our waiter from ancient China did the delivery of the order form for us.

The dishes arrive 1 after another, the kangkung was alright but the deep-fried spare rib was pathetic. Don’t get me wrong, it was tasty but there was too little to even savor its goodness to satisfaction.

Left : Snow beancurdRight : Steamed black “talapia” in home style

The snow beancurd was decent but I do think that the talapia served was rather small but nevertheless the fish was well steamed and tasted good.

After being served with rather small dishes such as the pathetically sized spare-ribs and the moderately sized fish, I was surprised that the claypot fish paste with beancurd stick come in a rather large serving.

The drinks were served in jugs, we drank our share of chrysanthemum tea from bowls instead of tea cups. I must say that I do find that the tea was really well made. The essence of chrysanthemum is really clear-cut different from that of the usual restaurants where it is tremendously diluted.

Our bill came to about RM 91. Besides the 5% government tax and 3% service charge, the item that really boosted the cost was the chrysanthemum tea. We had 2 jugs of it and it came to a whopping RM 12! (RM 6 per jug la), which comes to about RM 2 per person. On the other hand, the 2 jugs worth of tea was much more than ordering 6 cans of soft-drinks in the Klang Valley, which by today’s standard ranges anywhere from RM 1.50 to even more than RM 2 per can.

The service is good, and so is the atmosphere and the setting of the place. It’s really a nice place to bring people for over for an experience.

Will I come to this place again? Yes, but not for a really long time. I don’t think this is a place where one could come often unless one has really deep pockets and can afford to order larger portions as the servings are rather small. Like what I mentioned earlier, it is a place set out to be a pheasant style dining experience but take note that the cost of eating here surely isn’t. 🙂

There’s ample parking space but finding the way to the area might be a little difficult for those who are not familiar with that area, even those who are staying around may not know there is such a place.

Here’s a location map, to facilitate your journey to the place. The place is actually next to Pantai Seafood. Both restaurants are owned by Unique Seafood (PJ) Sdn Bhd.